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Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Disaster of a Sunroom

When we first moved into our house, the sunroom looked pretty nice. It wasn't some big gorgeous room but it did hold a lot of potential. I was kind of excited to make it into a nice room to sit in on sunny spring days.

Except for we then used it as a place to keep Mia contained when we left for work and bad things happened to it. I mean seriously though, what were we expecting? A little black lab puppy left for hours alone each day. Of course she would have fun with it!

Chewed up doorframe

One thing I don't have pictures of is that she chewed a huge hole in the linoleum flooring so it had to be replaced. We chose tile since it was nice and sturdy and the risk of damage was minimal.

View of the sunroom from the house

Two years after we moved in, I have decided it is time to fix up the sunroom. I want it looking nice and less like a small war zone. So I went around with my camera over the weekend, documenting all the before pictures.

The blinds Mia attacked.

She sure did have fun in there when she was a puppy.

View of the sunroom from the sliding door

And since the door frames, baseboards and window blinds were all nicely destroyed/damaged, I wasn't feeling overly inspired to do much cleaning. So the walls need a good wash, the windows need to be cleaned, and the flies need to be removed.

The collection of flies in the window

I also need to patch the walls in a couple places and give the whole room a good coat of paint.

The hole Mia chewed in the wall, as well as some more chewed baseboard

The whole room is just grungy and gross. It's hard to keep clean since flies and bugs fly in there constantly and since the sliding door is almost always open, leaves and pollen and other random things float in.

The gross window ledge

I may also need to rethink the decorations, since there used to be three of these cute square mirrors. Guess what happened to the third one?

Cute mirrors, there used to be three

Things are just a mess in there. I did start cleaning it up a little bit over the weekend but then decided to stop and wait until I had a good chunk of days in a row to do it. I think it will work best if I can finish the whole thing in a week or something.

The knotted together window blind cords (from two separate blinds)

Good thing I'll be a stay-at-home-wife in a couple short weeks. I'm pretty sure this will be one of my first projects.

So I realize that this post is just full of "before" pictures but I wanted to give you all a good idea of how it looks now, so that when I put up my "after" pictures, you are all amazed. Smart thinking, eh?

5 comments:

Yikes, that dog of yours sure is destructive! Just out of curiosity, why don't you guys just crate her when you are gone? I've heard that dogs sometimes destroy things because they get bored/anxious and that it's actually better for them to be in a crate where they will just relax and sleep or something.

Erin - All this destruction was done the first summer we had her, in 2011. She was just a puppy and went a little crazy in there. Since then she has definitely calmed down. And we just never crated her because we never felt 100% comfortable with the idea. For the most part, it's worked well for us.

While I’m not surprised by the chewed off doorframe and linoleum, I’m quite surprised that she was able to reach the blinds. Looking at the before pics, you’ve got your work cut out for you, and it looks like it would be a good idea to renovate the whole thing. At least that way, you get free rein in whatever you want it to come out as.

That sunroom is indeed in need of a lot of repairs. I agree with Terence; you should definitely go for the room makeover, if not to give you choices on what you want with the room. Or maybe modify the current one by adding a central piece that you like and working along that idea. Either way, you’re sure to get something good. Hope to see the results soon!

About Me

Ever since I was a little girl I wanted to be a homemaker. This blog captures my journey as I live out my dream. I will be sharing my life – from my struggles trying to have a baby to my day-to-day homemaking adventures. I am learning to enjoy every day that I am given and to live life to the fullest.